Pittsburgh, Pa. (Achieving Student Success Through Excellence in Teaching)
Bayer Creates ASSET Inc.
In 1992, Bayer convened a small group of community and education leaders in Pittsburgh, its U.S. headquarters city, to discuss a pressing problem: how to improve science education in the region’s elementary schools. At the time, education reform, particularly that of science education, was high on the national agenda. Just a few years before, The National Academies of Science and The Smithsonian Institution had created a joint project – the National Science Resources Center (NSRC) -- for the express purpose of improving science education, and the National Science Foundation had put in place its systemic science reform initiative for that same reason.
Following this initial meeting, Bayer began an intensive research period that took its executives to Washington and elsewhere to learn about best practices in science education. Roughly a year later, in 1994, Bayer created ASSET Inc. (Achieving Student Success through Excellence in Teaching) as an independent 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to bringing systemic science education reform to Allegheny County elementary schools.
ASSET is based on the NSRC’s model of reform, which includes the following five elements:
- Quality curriculum materials
- Teacher training
- Centralized materials support
- Assessment that is aligned to standards and curriculum
- Community and administrative involvement.
The teacher training element provides ongoing professional development that helps teachers bolster their knowledge of science content, as well as methodology, as they shift their teaching styles from one that is textbook-based to one that is standards-based, hands-on and inquiry-centered. This is particularly important for elementary school teachers whose pre-service training often does not provide them with sufficient knowledge of science content.
With the hands-on, inquiry-centered curriculum, students learn science the way scientists do it – by hypothesizing, observing, experimenting, keeping journals, problem solving and working in teams.
ASSET’s Remarkable Growth
In the early years, with ASSET beginning as a pilot program in five schools in two local school districts, Bayer provided most of the financial, human and intellectual resources for the project. Bayer scientists and executives accompanied ASSET staff and local teachers and administrators at the week-long training institutes that are both a hallmark and prerequisite of the NSRC program.
In 1995, ASSET garnered the first of what would become $5 million in National Science Foundation grants, helping it provide its system of teacher professional development and hands-on, inquiry centered curriculum materials to more schools throughout the region.
In 2000, when the NSF grants concluded, Bayer once again helped ASSET transition to a fee-for-service organization (up until then, it was offered to schools for free), allowing it to become completely independent and self-sustaining.
Today, ASSET serves 40 school districts, charter and private schools in southwestern Pennsylvania and directly impacts more than 1,800 teachers and 125,000 students annually.
In addition, the ASSET program is being rolled out to elementary schools across the state of Pennsylvania, thanks to Governor Ed Rendell and his “Science: It’s Elementary” initiative.
ASSET Adopted by Governor Rendell for Pennsylvania Schools
In March 2006, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell toured Aliquippa Elementary School in Pittsburgh, where he witnessed first, second, third, fourth and fifth graders donning safety glasses and doing hands-on science experience.
Aliquippa is a longtime ASSET school. At the time, Governor Rendell was well aware of ASSET’s track record of success, having proposed $10 million in his 2006-2007 budget for the “Science: It’s Elementary” program, which would help expand ASSET to elementary schools across Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania legislature agreed with Governor Rendell and passed his proposed budget, effectively turning ASSET into Pennsylvania’s official state elementary science curriculum. “Science: It’s Elementary” (SIE) is replicating the Bayer-spearheaded ASSET model by providing participating teachers with high quality professional development and working to increase student achievement in science education. Like ASSET, it gives teachers access to state-of-the-art, research-based curriculum and instructional materials; has students conduct scientific experiments throughout the school year; and provides intensive training to teachers and administrators to help transform their classrooms into science laboratories.
Since the 2006-2007 school year, ASSET has received a $23 million budget allocation ($10 million the first year and $13 million the second year) to design and coordinate SIE for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. As a result, ASSET has trained 2,600 elementary school teachers in 120 school districts to use the ASSET curriculum to instruct more than 59,000 students in science.
Recently, Governor Rendell announced a new budget allocation of $15 million more for year three of SIE. This additional funding will expand the program in the current 120 school districts, as well as additional school districts around the state.
Impact on Student Achievement
A growing body of evidence indicates the ASSET/NSRC style of inquiry-centered learning helps to level the playing field among all students and is closing achievement gaps between majority and minority students.
Assessments of ASSET students – both male and female – show they are far outperforming their U.S. counterparts and achieving at the highest international levels, right alongside students from the very countries that consistently produce some of the best and brightest STEM talent like Singapore, Korea and Japan.
Additionally, assessments of students involved in ASSET-like reform programs in Delaware and California are having the same kind of impact on minority students. In Delaware, for example, the achievement gap in science between black and white students has been eliminated in most schools. Where gaps do exist, they’re closing. Likewise in El Centro, California, one of the poorest communities in the country where more than 80 percent of the students are Hispanic and many speak English as a second language. In this school district, students perform better on national science tests, such as the Stanford Achievement Tests, than students who are taught science with textbooks.
All of this comes at a particularly critical moment for the U.S., if we are to heed a number of recent national reports that predict a growing shortfall of American scientists and engineers in the near future and call for renewed efforts to bring more women and minorities, including African-Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic-Americans into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.
For more information, please visit www.assetinc.org.